With the improved capabilities of computer software and networks with respect to handling information storage and retrieval, various types of systems have arisen for automating, to various degrees, the management of information. Additionally, with the advent of various new types of communications, such as email and cell phones, the ability to effectively communicate information to interested individuals has likewise increased.
As a result, certain types of computerized information delivery systems have been developed. For example, U.S. Patent Application No. 2005/0013417 by Zimmers et al. discloses an alert notification system that automatically disseminates a warning for dangerous conditions-such as, for example, a storm, a chemical fire, or a threatened gas explosion—to the people in the affected geographic area, school, or organization.
However, to date, little has been done to implement this type of automation in a way that is adapted to accommodate the information that must be managed in typical school systems. A standard school district may have thousands of students, ranging from kindergarten (and in some cases, even, publicly funded pre-school) through twelfth grade. These students will typically be dispersed throughout different schools that are based on school level, such as elementary, middle, junior high, and high schools, and in larger towns or cities, multiple numbers of such schools may exist that further divide up a multitude of students based on geographic location.
For example, in a medical emergency, a school nurse or a soccer coach may suddenly need to have access to a student's medical information in order to appropriately diagnosis or treat the student. Similarly, they may need to access the contact information for the student's parent or guardian in such an emergency. Generally, such information is kept in a “hard” file, such as a file folder, or more recently, in a basic computer database.
Further, in certain situations, a school official may need to contact the parents of certain groups of individuals, such as to let to the parents of students on a particular team know that a practice has been cancelled, or to notify all parents of the students in a particular school that there will be an early dismissal due to a loss of heat, or to inform all the parents in a school district of a snow closing. Generally, such communication is carried out by manually telephoning the parents of the students in order to reach whoever can be reached, or by some form of passive communication of the information, such as by posting the information on a website or reporting it to radio and/or telephone stations, in which cases it is incumbent upon the parents to be aware that the information is being communicated in the first place.
One system that has been proposed is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application No. 2005/0091368 by Ozburn, which describes an interactive crisis management and information system. The system actively notifies members of a student's household of crisis conditions by sending information via cell phones, pages, email, and other forms of communication. The system maintains a database of a student's household information that indicates who in the household will receive what crisis information, and who may take custody of the student. This system, however, is a basic notification system that does not address the challenges associated with properly managing the information for a large amount of students and determining which administrators or school personnel can access information and send messages for which students, and how this can be effectively accomplished and tracked for all different groups and subgroups of students.
The proper collection, maintenance, and availability of student information is extremely important. Therefore, a versatile and robust system is required to meet the various information needs for large amounts of students that comprise many different groups, which can result in a whole variety of different situations in which access to student-specific information, and further, the communication of information relevant to those students, is critical and time-sensitive.
What is desired, therefore, is a system for managing critical student information that effectively manages information for various different groups of students. What is further desired is a system for managing critical student information that regulates the ability of different users to access and send information for different student groups. What is also desired is a system that efficiently communicates, transfers, and tracks the student information.